Horse sense, the work continues, Maggie’s news, what’s in a name?

Mama and I did not take too long to come to the conclusion that we could not take Wes up on his offer to give us two more horses. In cutting down his inventory of horses, fifteen or so, he is giving away his mares. He is being selective and we are happy to have been offered the horses, especially since these are finished horses, ready to ride and young enough to keep for many years to come.


The problem is that we are not doing right by the horses we already have and sometimes struggling to feed the calves off of which we hope to make a profit for the farm. With that in mind I called Wes on Saturday morning to let him know we could not accept his offer. Realizing how generous an offer it was, it was even harder to ask him to take Jazz back also. We are just not set up for multiple horses yet. We still have Misty and although it will be at least two years before we can do anything with her, for the moment, we have made the decision to limit our herd in order to afford what we have.

Since he was out and about Saturday morning, Wes came by pretty early to get Jazz. We talked for a little while and he loaded the horse and was gone. He did offer to set us up to ride anytime we wanted and in the future, when we are better prepared, we will get our horses off of him. I was sad to see Jazz load up and go especially since he so nonchalantly walked right up into the trailer.

It will make Grandma happy to have only the one horse since for some time now she has been lecturing us on proper horse care (which we have not been doing according to her thinking) and scolding us for letting Jazz be so mean to Misty. I am not sure what we will hear now that we are down to the young filly. On the positive side, Misty is good to work with, loves our attention and without the larger horse, there will be plenty of grass for her in the pasture where we keep her.

As for the calves, all but six are weaned. Of the most mature group we have, we lost one last week. None of us are sure just what happened but he died suddenly one morning. It is another of those unpleasant parts of living where we do now. Grandpa has never before had to deal with the losses we have experienced with bottle fed calves. I am not overly concerned, but I did not learn their names. We are still way ahead of the average.

Maggie announced last week that she is pregnant. The due date is September 22nd. Does that date sound familiar to anyone? The funny part is that if the baby actually comes in that time frame, its birthday could fall on any one of four birthdays; Cori, Nate, Becky and I were all born between the 18th and the 22nd. September really is a busy month, or maybe December was.

Maggie told me Aaron has already assigned a nickname to the child; Bob. I told her that could work out either way. The connotation is obvious if the child is boy. If it is a girl, they could name it Bobra.

The spelling would be insignificant as long as the name is spoken with a Southern accent.